The Ghana Empire

STATES AND SOCITIES IN SUBSAHARAN AFRICA HIST 1301 | History The Ghana Empire On behalf of the Islamic Caliphate, Arab rulers in Morocco began minting gold dinar coins around the beginning of the ninth century. The dinar, which has been the official currency of the Muslim world since the end of the seventh century, served as a vital conduit between the then-vast Arab kingdom, which was centred on Baghdad. The kingdom known as Ghana, which is not to be confused with the contemporary nation-state of Ghana, is where the gold used to manufacture those coins in Morocco originated. The Arab governor of Morocco sought to capture this country but was unsuccessful. From the sixth until the twelfth century, the Ghana Empire ruled over the area that separated southeast Mauritania from western Mali. Larger political entities were able to emerge after the Romans introduced the Arabian camel between the third and fifth centuries CE, which led to the regularisation of trade between Morocco and the Niger River. Prior to this, ancient trade-based societies had existed in the region for some time, benefiting from the lucrative salt and gold found there. Up until that point, West African clan-based communities in tiny, uncomplicated villages had been sustained by the advancement of agricultural and ironworking technologies. But in the Sahel grasslands south of the Sahara, a collection of chiefdoms came together to establish the loosely knit empire that is now known as the kingdom of Ghana somewhere in the fifth century. While the exact beginnings of the Ghana Empire remain unknown, one hypothesis suggests that Soninke speakers from Senegal created it and called their country Wagadu (the term Ghana, which was used to refer to it outside of its borders, was one of its king's titles). According to Soninke oral legend, the kingdom was established by the formidable Diabe Cisse, whose father Dinga, a wandering mystic, was reported to have defeated a female water genie. After that, Dinga married the genie's daughters. These ladies were married to Dinga, and the coupling produced sons, whose offspring went on to become significant Soninke lineages. When Cisse, an alien and the son of Dinga, arrived, the history of the area—which was then vulnerable to the unstable consequences of nomadic raids—took a radical turn. The Sanhaja people of southern Morocco moved farther into the Sahel when the Sahara began to dry up, seeking water and seasonal grazing grounds. Their migrations took the form of violent raids on established agricultural groups, such as the Soninke, during drought years. Commanders of the Soninke cavalry responded by looking to Cisse; legend has it that Cisse brought the Soninke together in a loose federation to fight the invaders and to enlarge the realm. Early Ghana's expansion included a gradual process of annexing autonomous kingdoms and chiefdoms and incorporating them into the larger empire. When Diabe Cisse initially united the Soninke, he built four central provinces that were the basis of the empire. The borders of the kingdom were occupied by chiefdoms and kingdoms that had been subjugated. While some of these vassal kingdoms paid little tribute and functioned mostly independently of the capital, other states were subject to some degree of authority from it. The kingdom's armed forces grew along with it. At the beginning of the eleventh century CE, Ghana's ruler commanded some 200,000 men when the country was at its height of strength. During the early stages of Ghanaian history, a number of factors may have contributed to the country's unity, including the Soninke people's resistance against nomadic raids. Historians contend that Ghana's stance on commerce was different. Because the Soninke were in a prime position to take advantage of the trans-Saharan commerce, Ghana grew powerful and its monarchs got affluent. They were located in the middle of the western Sahel, midway between the main salt source, the desert, and the Bambuk region, which included goldfields along the upper Senegal River. At first, the Soninke traded their excess gold for salt that the Taghaza people of the Sahara collected, but eventually camel transportation over the desert gave North Africans access to gold from West Africa. The Soninke were able to serve as middlemen, transferring Saharan salt to the gold-producing savanna forest south of them, as the demand for gold throughout the Sahara grew. Ghana is often celebrated as a “land of gold,” yet the kings’ hold over the Bambuk goldfields was shaky. The kingdom's southernmost commercial post, Ghiyaru, was not far from the goldfields. The mining area was governed locally by the chief of the closest village. Although Ghanaian rulers were able to impose a strict monopoly on gold nuggets weighing more than an ounce, their dominance was unstable due to the challenges of excavating mine shafts up to sixty feet deep and transporting the gold to the capital at Koumbi Saleh (modern-day southern Mauritania), which could take up to eighteen days. Nonetheless, the empire's riches was legendary, and word of it travelled from Muslim intellectuals in Baghdad to North Africa and further into Europe. Ghana's riches also came from other commodities, such as prisoners and copper, which the monarch taxed heavily. A large number of inmates were frequently POWs. Some had been taken during raids for enslavement. The Ghanaian slave attack on the Lamlam region was described in the twelfth century by the Moroccan geographer al-Idrisi, who wrote: "The people of... Ghana make excursion in Lamlam bringing natives into captivity, transporting them to their own country and selling them to merchants." Al-Zuhri, who lived at the same time as Al-Idrisi, corroborated his observations. An estimated 5,000 prisoners were carried annually across the Sahara to slave markets in North Africa at the height of the Ghana Empire, according to scholars. But the Ghanaians' forbearance was put to the ultimate test in the eleventh century. Although extreme reformist Islamic groups in Morocco posed a danger to the peace and wealth of the country, the populace welcomed Muslim businessmen. The kingdom had grown to include the Islamic town of Awdaghost, which was an oasis to the north of the city, early in the century. Around the same period, the Sanhaja people of the southern Sahara gave rise to the militant Islamic Almoravid movement, which quickly led to the establishment of an empire centred on Morocco. Following their conquest of Awdaghost in 1055, the Soninke Ghanaians became Muslims as a result of the subsequent religious conflict and sectarian violence. At the end of the twelfth century, Ghana's trading connections had become so weak due to the broader damage caused by conflict that it had lost its position as the leading force in the region's trade. After Ghana was fully Islamized, it started to generate well-known Muslim intellectuals, attorneys, and Quran readers, many of whom went to Mecca or Islamic Spain to study or make pilgrimages. The West African kingdoms underwent a period of change in their history throughout the eleventh and twelfth century. New goldfields were opened at Bure in the forest savanna south of Bambuk, well outside Ghana's commercial reach, while Ghana grew and was invaded in turn. Travelling Soninke traders skipped the capital of Ghana and moved the North African caravans to Oualata (Walata), transferring the gold from Bure to the Middle Niger area via new trans-Saharan trade routes east of Awdaghost. The opportunity to declare their independence was given to the southern Soninke and Malinke chiefdoms by these events. Early in the 1200s, the Malinke people and much of the old Ghana were subjugated by the southern Soninke chiefdom of Sosso. This prepared the ground for the Malinke people's independence war against the Sosso, which resulted in the establishment of the Sudanese kingdom of Mali.